Forum:Adopting Articles
If an article hasn't been replied to in a while and the author isn't responsive or active on the wiki, what's the general protocol for adopting an article? --Ghostwheel 20:55, June 24, 2010 (UTC) : Sacrifice a goat, then do a satanic ritual and eat said goat flesh. Then write your name on the articles as the adopter. If said person ever reply then we are going to deal with it on the talk page. Oh step 1 is optional by the way. --Leziad 21:17, June 24, 2010 (UTC) :: *looks up from the gory mess* What? Optional? Damn, jumped the gun... :-/ --Ghostwheel 21:19, June 24, 2010 (UTC) :::What? No, that's a crappy policy Leziad. There isn't a well specified one in general though. Since you can already edit for clarity and grammar and minor things, the only reason to need to adopt is if you wanted to make mechanical changes to an article where the author is unresponsive. Which is probably fine in some situations, but completely unnecessary in others. Adoption in general seems the sort of thing that we should allow current users to block if there's insufficient justification for it, just to keep consistency up. And that means announcing your intentions and giving the community time to shut the bid down. - TarkisFlux 21:25, June 24, 2010 (UTC) :::: Where should I state my intention? On the talk page of the article in question? And how long should we wait between stating intention and adopting? Is 3 days enough? Or a week? (Though a week seems really long online...) --Ghostwheel 22:12, June 24, 2010 (UTC) :::::I actually think adoption should be a last resort when the author is non-responsive so that we maintain author control and continuity. So what I'd like to see for process (and the community can shout me down on this if it wants to) is something more like: explain desired changes on talk page like you would for any active author -> bug them on their talk page so they have no excuses for not seeing it -> propose adoption of article from non-responsive author -> take article over. And I actually think a week for each of those ->s is reasonable. It is a long damn time on the interwebs, but that's intentional. A big reason for that is the fact that this is a volunteer community with people who don't invest nearly the amount of time that you and I do and don't regularly refresh the recent changes page. Beyond that though, I actually don't want adoption of semi-accepted and static work, as I don't think that matches up with our author maintained homebrew goal. I think that giving the author of the work a fairly large portion of time to get back to us on an article that is basically finished and not under significant maintenance (and thus not significant attention) works because I don't expect them to be looking at things that might be up for adoption for non-response very regularly. :::::But yeah, if you want changes made, the talk page is the place to start. And if there's no response, we can work from there. I don't see why there wouldn't be exceptions to that of course. - TarkisFlux 22:47, June 24, 2010 (UTC) :::::: Hmmm I like Tarkis's idea more, although I would also allow adoption when a page is about to get deleted, like a uncompleted page about to be deleted (and the author was not present enough to warrant sandboxing). Any thoughts? --Leziad 23:37, June 24, 2010 (UTC) :::::::That'd be one of those exceptions I could see but wasn't thinking about. I also don't care if someone wants to put their own stuff up for adoption / deletion and someone takes it right away (like Jay did a while back). - TarkisFlux 23:51, June 24, 2010 (UTC) :::::::: I know that just by posting this question nearly all the article I wrote are now in the balance, but are there any circumstances you can think of where a hostile take over would be necessary? The "I stole your baby!" approach to adoption?--Teh Storm 07:31, June 25, 2010 (UTC) :::::::::In a word, no. Deletion first. Where an author hopes to save a page, then to a sandbox. If someone makes a working option using the intended title while the original is sandboxed, then shit happens, but never forced adoption. -- Jota 07:53, June 25, 2010 (UTC) :::::::::: So, basically, it is never supposed to happen, but under the right circumstances it can by accident? That is very relieving in a weird "it's not cancer, it's your twin" sort of way.--Teh Storm 08:01, June 25, 2010 (UTC) :::::::::::We have hostile adjustment policies, but it's no more than a balance level change. If someone hates your idea but it's mechanically viable, the extent of their power over it is to yell at you on talk pages or try to get the community behind a forced change to it's balance level. Since most active people engage with their detractors, take criticism and make adjustments, and we throw SGTs at things to give a more objective assessment we don't have a lot of forced changes. Moral of the story: write stuff in sandboxes and get early critiques if you have concerns, learn from what people say to you, be flexible, don't write material that belongs at another balance point and then refuse to change it, and don't write material with holes that requires someone to adopt it from you to fix it if you leave. - TarkisFlux 14:54, June 25, 2010 (UTC)